Dan’s Train Blog

I first became aware of Paul Scoles’ work when I saw the “Scenery—Gazette Style” series in Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette in the late 1970’s. His techniques always struck me as elegant and relatively easy to follow. His trendsetting photography also made the work look good.

Paul has come out with a DVD based on scenery he’s building for his Sn3 Pelican Bay Railway and Navigation Company layout. I bought my copy from Paul directly through his website at http://www.paulscoles.com/ .

The DVD is excellent and runs over two hours covering

• Rock casting, coloring, and installation
• Ground cover using natural materials like decomposed granite
• Construction of fir trees
• Construction of deciduous trees using several products from Scenic Express
• Building a good looking forest from these trees
• Building scenery around structures (although structures on flat-ish ground is all that’s really covered)
• Scenery concept and design: planning how progression and change in the scenery as you move around the layout can create the impression of distance and changing climate

I highly recommend this video and I’ll be re-viewing it often as I build.